“The Yiddish people must be counted among the founder nations of Europe.”

— Paul Kriwaczek, Yiddish Civilization

The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation

In his acclaimed book Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation, historian and writer Paul Kriwaczek invites readers to rethink the place of Jewish history in Europe. He argues that Yiddish civilization should be recognized as one of the civilizations that helped shape Europe. His striking assertion that “the Yiddish people must be counted among the founder nations of Europe” challenges the familiar perception of Jews as perpetual outsiders to European history.

As Kriwaczek explains:

The word Yiddish just means Jewish in the Yiddish tongue and, like English or French, refers equally to the language, the people who speak it, the culture it supports and the civilization its speakers built.

The word Yiddish just means Jewish in the Yiddish tongue and, like English or French, refers equally to the language, the people who speak it, the culture it supports and the civilization its speakers built.

The book was brought to my attention by Boris Feldblyum, a renowned Jewish genealogist and author of Russian-Jewish Given Names: Their Origins and Variants.

He is also a professional architectural photographer, featured in One Photographer’s Journey.

After reading several of my essays, he suggested that Kriwaczek’s idea might have an equally compelling Middle Eastern counterpart, and encouraged me to write about it.

If Yiddish civilization deserves to be counted among the founder nations of Europe, what about the Jewish civilization that flourished throughout the Middle East and North Africa?

Why shouldn’t the Mizrahi Jewish civilization be counted among the founder nations of the Arab world?

The parallel is not immediately obvious. Yet the more one examines history, the more compelling it becomes.

This essay mirrors Kriwaczek’s title structure, extending his framing of Yiddish civilization to a parallel case in the Middle East and North Africa.

A Civilization Older Than the Arab World

Long before the rise of Islam, long before Arabic became the dominant language of the region, Jewish communities flourished in Babylon, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Persia, and across North Africa.

The Babylonian Jewish community produced the Babylonian Talmud, one of the foundational works of Judaism, in the great........

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